State tourism departments and Air India to launch holiday packages

New Delhi : National carrier Air India on Saturday said that it is set to launch holiday packages from December 1 under the Incredible India program in collaboration with state tourism departments. Among the states represented were Maharashtra, Karnataka, Sikkim, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir.

“Ashwani Lohani, managing director, Air India and senior officials of state tourism departments met in New Delhi today (on Saturday) to work out the modalities of the Incredible Air India Holiday Packages to be launched from December 1, 2015,” the national carrier said in a release.

Under the packages, tourists will have the option of choosing from three-four packages in each state.

The packages will cover a wide range of interests like wildlife reserves, religious places, adventure sports like skiing in Gulmarg and Srinagar, paragliding in Kangra, forts, museums, festivities & fairs like Pushkar in Rajasthan.

Air India claimed that the two nights/three-day packages will be attractively priced and will be available for direct purchase from the Air India website.

Lohani also said that the national carrier would be increasing the intra-state connectivity with the ATR-72 aircraft, operated by subsidiary Alliance Air.

Google Arts and Culture has partnered with the Ministry of Tourism to unveil a 360-degree virtual reality video for the global “Incredible India” tourism campaign.

As part of the partnership, Google Arts and Culture will provide users with an immersive 360-degree view of India’s heritage, festivity, spirituality and adventure.

The video will showcase users a 360-degree view of some of the most iconic destinations in India including Qutub Minar, Amritsar’s Golden Temple, Vitthala Temples at Hampi and Goa’s easygoing vibe.

Representational Image. Wikimedia commons

“India is an iconic destination that offers unique experiences of climate, geography, culture, art, literature and food. We want to give people in India and across the world an opportunity to immerse in our country’s rich heritage,” Union Tourism Minister K.J. Alphons said in a statement on Thursday.

“Through our partnership with Google, we want to engage new and global audiences and offer them immersive content in a never-before-seen manner,” Alphons added.

The video has been created using the best of 360-degree video capture technology, including Google’s Yi Halo camera and the music is inspired by the rhythms and melodies of the regions depicted in the video.

For Google Cardboard users the experience will be even more gratifying as they can turn the 360 video into a fully immersive Virtual Reality experience.

“Through our partnership with Ministry of Tourism for their internationally acclaimed ‘Incredible India’ campaign, we want to bring new and global audiences to India’s rich heritage and history,” said Luisella Mazza, Head of Operations at Google Arts & Culture. IANS